arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Christian Spiering.
Cherenkov techniques are widely used in astroparticle experiments. This article reviews the various detection principles and the corresponding experiments, including some of the physics breakthroughs. In particular, it traces the development since the mid of the 1990s, a period when the field took a particularly dynamic development.
This article is an attempt to review 50 years of high-energy cosmic particle physics at the Institute for Nuclear Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It is written by an outsider whose scientific career, to a large part, was formed by collaborating with INR scientists in the late 1980s and 1990s. The review covers the fields of cosmic-ray, gamma-ray and high-energy neutrino physics. The main focus will be on INR's large infrastructures in the Baksan Valley and at Lake Baikal. Research at these facilities is flanked by participation in top experiments at different places around the world, recently the Telescope Array in the USA and the LHAASO detector in China.
We present an overview of the art project Aganta Kairos (To Fish the Metaphysical Time). This project celebrates the neutrino, the ghost particle, which scientists consider a cosmic messenger and the artist regards as a link between people who care about their relationship to the cosmos and question their origins. The artwork is based on a performance of celebration and seeks to build a human community that encompasses different knowledge domains and interpretations of the universe. This intersection of knowledge is realized during the performance of placing a plaque, held with witnesses, and during subsequent exhibitions. Images, sounds, videos, and sculpture testify to the diversity of approaches to questioning our origins, ranging from traditional western science to ancient shamanism. The sites were selected for their global coverage and, for the South Pole, Mediterranean, and Lake Baikal, their connection to ongoing neutrino experiments. In December 2020, a plaque was installed at the South Pole IceCube Laboratory, the seventh and final site. We provide examples of images and links to additional images and videos.
This talk sketches the main milestones of the path towards cubic kilometer neutrino telescopes. It starts with the first conceptual ideas in the late 1950s and describes the emergence of concepts for detectors with a realistic discovery potential in the 1970s and 1980s. After the pioneering project DUMAND close to Hawaii was terminated in 1995, the further development was carried by NT200 in Lake Baikal, AMANDA at the South Pole and ANTARES in the Mediterranean Sea. In 2013, more than half a century after the first concepts, IceCube has discovered extraterrestrial high-energy neutrinos and opened a new observational window to the cosmos - marking a milestone along a journey which is far from being finished.
With the identification of a diffuse flux of astrophysical ("cosmic") neutrinos in the TeV-PeV energy range, IceCube has opened a new window to the Universe. However, the corresponding cosmic landscape is still uncharted: so far, the observed flux does not show any clear association with known source classes. In the present talk, I sketch the way from Baikal-NT200 to IceCube and summarize IceCube's recent astrophysics results. Finally, I describe the present projects to build even larger detectors: GVD in Lake Baikal, KM3NeT in the Mediterranean Sea and IceCube-Gen2 at the South Pole. These detectors will allow studying the high-energy neutrino sky in much more detail than the present arrays permit.
Air-shower measurements in the primary energy range beyond 10 TeV can be used to address important questions of astroparticle and particle physics. The most prominent among these questions are the search for the origin of charged Galactic cosmic rays and the so-far little understood transition from Galactic to extra-galactic cosmic rays. A very promising avenue towards answering these fundamental questions is the construction of an air-shower detector with sufficient sensitivity for gamma-rays to identify the accelerators and large exposure to achieve accurate spectroscopy of local cosmic rays. With the new ground-based large-area (up to 100 square-km) wide-angle (Omega ~ 0.6-0.85 sr) air-shower detector concept HiSCORE (Hundred*i Square-km Cosmic ORigin Explorer), we aim at exploring the cosmic ray and gamma-ray sky (accelerator-sky) in the energy range from few 10s of TeV to 1 EeV using the non-imaging air-Cherenkov detection technique. The full detector simulation is presented here. The resulting sensitivity of a HiSCORE-type detector to gamma-rays will extend the energy range so far accessed by other experiments beyond energies of 50 - 100 TeV, thereby opening up the ultra high energy gamma-ray (UHE gamma-rays, E > 10 TeV) observation window.
In 2012, physicists and astronomers celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the detection of cosmic rays by Viktor Hess. One year later, in 2013, there was first evidence for extraterrestrial high-energy neutrinos, i.e. for signal which may contain key information on the origin of cosmic rays. That evidence is provided by data taken with the IceCube neutrino telescope at the South Pole. First concepts to build a detector of this kind have been discussed at the 1973 International Cosmic Ray Conference. Nobody would have guessed at that time that the march towards first discoveries would take forty years, the biblical time of the march from Egypt to Palestine. But now, after all, the year 2013 has provided us a first glimpse to the promised land of the neutrino universe at highest energies. This article sketches the evolution towards detectors with a realistic discovery potential, describes the recent relevant results obtained with the IceCube and ANTARES neutrino telescopes and tries a look into the future.
The search for the sources of cosmic rays is a three-fold assault, using charged cosmic rays, gamma rays and neutrinos. The first conceptual ideas to detect high energy neutrinos date back to the late fifties. The long evolution towards detectors with a realistic discovery potential started in the seventies and eighties, with the pioneering works in the Pacific Ocean close to Hawaii and in Lake Baikal in Siberia. But only now, half a century after the first concepts, such a detector is in operation: IceCube at the South Pole. We do not yet know whether with IceCube we will indeed detect extraterrestrial high energy neutrinos or whether this will remain the privilege of next generation telescopes. But whatever the answer will be: the path to the present detectors was a remarkable journey. This review sketches its main milestones.
We propose the liquid-scintillator detector LENA (Low Energy Neutrino Astronomy) as a next-generation neutrino observatory on the scale of 50 kt. The outstanding successes of the Borexino and KamLAND experiments demonstrate the large potential of liquid-scintillator detectors in low-energy neutrino physics. LENA's physics objectives comprise the observation of astrophysical and terrestrial neutrino sources as well as the investigation of neutrino oscillations. In the GeV energy range, the search for proton decay and long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments complement the low-energy program. Based on the considerable expertise present in European and international research groups, the technical design is sufficiently mature to allow for an early start of detector realization.
Neutrinos are unique cosmic messengers. Present attempts are directed to extend the window of cosmic neutrino observation from low energies (Sun, supernovae) to much higher energies. The aim is to study the most violent processes in the Universe which accelerate charged particles to highest energies, far beyond the reach of laboratory experiments on Earth. These processes must be accompanied by the emission of neutrinos. Neutrinos are electrically neutral and interact only weakly with ordinary matter; they thus propagate through the Universe without absorption or deflection, pointing back to their origin. Their feeble interaction, however, makes them extremely difficult to detect. The years 2008-2010 have witnessed remarkable steps in developing high energy neutrino telescopes. In 2010, the cubic-kilometre neutrino telescope IceCube at the South Pole has been completed. In the Mediterranean Sea the first-generation neutrino telescope ANTARES takes data since 2008, and efforts are directed towards KM3NeT, a telescope on the scale of several cubic kilometres. The next years will be key years for opening the neutrino window to the high energy Universe. With an instrumented volume of a cubic kilometre, IceCube is entering a region with realistic discovery potential. Discoveries or non-discoveries of IceCube will have a strong impact on the future of the field and possibly mark a "moment of truth". In this review, we discuss the scientific case for neutrino telescopes, describe the detection principle and its implementation in first- and second-generation installations and finally collect the existing physics results and the expectations for future detectors. We conclude with an outlook to alternative detection methods, in particular for neutrinos of extremely high energies.
This talk presents conclusions for KM3NeT which may be drawn from latest IceCube results and from optimization studies of the IceCube configuration. It discusses possible coordinated efforts between IceCube and KM3NeT (or, for the time being, IceCube and ANTARES). Finally, it lists ideas for formal relations between neutrino telescopes on the cubic kilometer scale.
The year 2008 has witnessed remarkable steps in developing high energy neutrino telescopes. IceCube at the South Pole has been deployed with 40 of its planned 80 strings and reached half a cubic kilometer instrumented volume, in the Mediterranean Sea the "first-stage" neutrino telescope ANTARES has been completed and takes data with 12 strings. The next years will be key years for opening the neutrino window to the high energy universe. IceCube is presently entering a region with realistic discovery potential. Early discoveries (or non-discoveries) with IceCube will strongly influence the design and the estimated discovery chances of the Northern equivalent KM3NeT. Following theoretical estimates, cubic kilometer telescopes may just scratch the regions of discovery. Therefore detectors presently planned should reach sensitivities substantially beyond those of IceCube.
Astroparticle physics has evolved as an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of particle physics, astronomy and cosmology. Over the last two decades, it has moved from infancy to technological maturity and is now envisaging projects on the 100 Million Euro scale. This price tag requires international coordination, cooperation and convergence to a few flagship projects. The Roadmap Committee of ApPEC (Astroparticle Physics European Coordination) has recently released a roadmap covering the next ten years. This talk describes status and perspectives of astroparticle physics in Europe and reports the recommendations of the Roadmap Committee.
This talk review status and results from the two presently operating underwater/ice neutrino telescopes, NT-200 in Lake Baikal and Amanda-II at the South Pole. It also gives a description of the design and the expected performance of Icecube, the next-generation neutrino telescope at South Pole.
This talk gives a brief description of goals, expected performance and status of the Icecube project.
We review recent results on the search for high energy extraterrestrial neutrinos, neutrinos induced by WIMP annihilation and neutrinos coincident with Gamma Ray Bursts as obtained with the Baikal neutrino telescope NT-200. We describe the moderate upgrade of NT-200 towards a ~10 Mton scale detector NT-200+. We finally draw a few lessons from our experience which may be of use for other underwater experiments.
The next ten years promise to be a particularly exciting decade for high energy neutrino astrophysics. The frontier of TeV and PeV energy is presently being tackled by large, expandable arrays constructed in open water or ice. Detectors tailored to record acoustic, radio, fluorescence or air shower signatures from neutrino interactions at PeV-EeV energy are being designed in parallel. During the next decade, the sensitivity to neutrinos from TeV to EeV energies may improve by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude. This talk reviews methods, status and prospects of detectors and sketches a scenario for the experimental progress.